Professor Robert Crawford

Born in Lanarkshire, Robert Crawford studied and taught at Glasgow and Oxford, moving to St Andrews in 1989. He has published six collections of poetry and over two dozen other books. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the British Academy, he has given readings and lectures at Berkeley, Oxford and Yale as well as in schools and village halls (smallest audience: four adults and a baby). An experienced broadcaster, he has been a judge of the National Poetry Competition, the T S Eliot Prize, and the David Cohen Prize. Robert Crawford’s most recent collection of poems is Testament (Jonathan Cape, 2014), shortly after his prose book Bannockburns: Scottish Independence and Literary Imagination, 1314-2014 (Edinburgh University Press, 2014). 2015 sees the publication by Jonathan Cape and Farrar, Straus & Giroux of Young Eliot, the first volume of his two-volume biography of T. S. Eliot. Ongoing research interests include T. S. Eliot, Scottish poetry, creative writing, poetry and libraries, and poetry and science. Robert leads the Royal Society of Edinburgh-supported Arts and Humanities Research Network Loch Computer. Formerly Head of School, now he is Director of Research for Planning, Publications, and Grants.

Selected Awards

1988 Eric Gregory Award
1993 Scottish Arts Council Book Award, for Identifying Poets
1999 Scottish Arts Council Book Award, for Spirit Machines
2007 Saltire Society Scottish Research Book of the Year, for Scotland’s Books
Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellow
British Academy Fellow